Morbius Returns To Theaters Because Of All The Memes

Image: Sony/Marvel/Kotaku/Andrey_Kuzmin (Shutterstock)

Over the past few months, many people have been sharing memes related to the terrible superhero movie Morbius, which stars noted method actor Jared Leto as a living vampire or something… look, I haven’t seen the movie, okay? Anyway, all those online memes, jokes, and ha-has have been fun, but things are spiraling out of control. Sony – probably seeing all the renewed interest in Morbius and all things morbin’ – has now brought the film back to theaters. What have we done?

Morbius was released in April to very negative reviews. For those who don’t know, it’s a Sony Marvel movie, not an MCU joint. This means he can tease connections to the most popular and successful MCU moviesbut will likely never be allowed to truly partake in all the lucrative pleasures of Iron Man and Dr. Strange.

Earning only around $170 million at the box office, Morbius should have slipped out into the night to die in a field, or whatever happens to the unsuccessful comic book movies. But the future Oscar winner got a second wind when it was released on digital streaming, after which Morbius memes exploded thanks in large part to a Twitch channel that started streaming the movie 24/7. Here’s what Kotaku’s Jeremy Winslow reported last week:

Thanks to the film’s proliferation on Twitch since at least May 24, a glut of Morbius memes have begun to seep onto the internet. There’s the hilarious one from Twitter user Rama_Firmansya “History of Morbius Meme” a timeline spanning from 2016 to 2022 that charts our progression from “hugh mungus” to “amongus” to “morbius”. There are a variety of Morbius box art memes as Nintendo DS, To changeand Wii game – a trilogy, if you will. Hell, I even spotted an entire Twitch channel named morbing_man that was only streaming Morbius memes before the company launched it into space. Memes are everywhere at this point, like a virus. Like a… morbius?

And all of this led to something very strange. Sony, apparently reacting to all this new buzz and morbinism online, brought the film back to theaters. As reported by Exhibitor Relations on TwitterSony has confirmed that Morbius will be back in 1,037 theaters this weekend, more than two months after its first opening. And I’ve already spotted at least a few people who have bought tickets.

Sony has yet to confirm why the film is returning to so many theaters so long after its initial release. It’s safe to assume it has to do with the sudden spike in online chatter, but you never know. Maybe Sony really liked Morbius and wanted to share it with people.

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Kotaku has reached out to Sony about the film’s sudden return to theaters.

Unfortunately, all this brouhaha could lead to an even darker future in which Morbius gets a sequel. And sure, we’re all having a good laugh at the “Time to morbinjokes, but it’s time to stop. The world don’t need to give possible cult leader Jared Leto a successful Class C superhero franchise, not to mention more money. Please stop being so morbid, folks. We still have time. We can still stop Sony from making Morbius 2.

Maybe you think it won’t be so bad? Maybe you even liked the first movie? But if we do get a sequel, you better believe Sony will have the folks behind it cramming in memes, inside jokes, references to existing memes, and god forbid, more morbin’.

But then again, that also sounds…unbelievable?

Alright, whatever, I’m on board. Morb your brain and get us a terrible, meme-filled, way-too-late sequel that completely misses the trend and ends up being a wild shitshow. Maybe this will ultimately kill the living vampire and, hopefully, Leto’s career.